INNOVATION AND COLLABORATION ACROSS ACADEMIA

The purpose of this article is to describe experiences of creating a culture of cooperation across the field of study at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (HVL), initially at the Bergen campus.

The aim is to facilitate increased quality and innovation within the four community assignments in the education sector:(1) teaching, (2) researching, (3) developing/development work and (4) disseminating.

For a long time at HVL part of the employees have discussed the importance of being in the private and public sector with interdisciplinary, innovative and entrepreneurial knowledge and skills, especially team-based. HVL's strategy also says this, as well as the “parliamentary announcement 16”. This therefore concerns both our employees and students at HVL and is something we should spend time on - and get better on doing. Spring 2017 the department of Health (AHS), in collaboration with the two other departments, Department of Engineering and Business Administration (AIØ) and Teaching Department (AL), conducted a breakfast seminar with the focus "Out of the departmental silo and cooperation across". All participants showed great interest and commitment. Several willingly relinquished their experience in research, development and teaching, but also showed a clear desire and need to get started with more interdisciplinary cooperation. Such meetings points, maybe random or not, but this must nevertheless be put into systems if we want to do more of this. This could strengthen HVL as an organization.

The workshop across the departments at HVL show results. First, several new innovative across departments’ projects were set up. Secondly, very positive feedback from the employees and that there were so many common opportunities and challenges, but also great to get in touch with colleagues with an innovative spirit and a new way of thinking.

These findings have important implications for further development of the collaboration accross HVL.